Festa!

 

All cities, towns, and villages here in Catalonia have a festa major – an annual festival, usually to celebrate their patron saint – that goes on for days. In Figueres it is Santa Creu (Holy Cross), celebrated at the end of April and spilling over into the first days of May. The main church in town is Sant Pere (Saint Peter), and it just celebrated its 1000^th birthday.  Sant Pere is the patron of Figueres, and why the festa major is not celebrated on June 29, his feast day, I don’t know.

During the festa there is an opening ceremony from the balcony of the city hall; there is a mass at the church; there are giants that dance through the streets; there are human castles; there are sardanes (the Catalan national dance) danced to cobles, live bands that include one instrument unique to Catalonia; there are various concerts; there is a motorcade of classic Spanish cars – the beloved Seat 600; there is a chess competition; there is an embroidery demonstration; there is an arts and crafts fair; an antique fair, an art fair, and a food fair; there is a midway; there is a flower-decorated holy cross competition; and for the grand finale, there are fireworks. And that is only a partial list of activities of the 6-day long party.

This was a dance competition.  In the video you get a sense of what a cobla sounds like, and also you can see what the actual dance looks like.  Good dancers never let their heals rest on the ground.  The group with the pink skirts came from France -- what is called Catalonia North.  The Spanish sold off part of Catalonia in a treaty long ago, but the Catalan language and some of its culture has continued there among some.  Even though many -- maybe a majority (you can't know if you don't let the people vote on a referendum) -- Catalans want to break off and become independent, Spain wants to keep the rest of Catalonia, no matter what.

This woman is Dolors and she owns the blue Seat.  You can see her driving it above.  It's been in the family since 1963 when it was bought new by her father-in-law for her husband.  She showed me the sales certificate which she keeps in a plastic envelope.  Her son, Ramon, showed me the interior and explained that to start it, you turn the key but then you have to flip a separate switch.  All of a sudden I remembered the 1960 Mercedes 220SE my Dad had -- the car I learned to drive on!  There too you turned the key and then pushed a button on the dashboard to start the engine.

Seat 600s making themselves heard on La Rambla of Figueres.

Look who I found at the antique fair

This year they didn’t stuff our mailboxes with the schedule booklet, so I went out and found one. You need it or you might miss something! And even so, you have to deal with the problem of two events that you want to attend happening at the same time.  And then there are those chance encounters...

We met through our dogs.  We always chat when we see each other,
but I don't know their names and they don't know mine. 
Cupcake knows it's them from far off -- he probably
smells the treats that she always carries with her.

In front of a shop called Dystopia that sells comic figurines,
I aimed my camera at them,
and they aimed back.

If you like this post, you might also like my book: No Regrets: A Life in Catalonia, available on all the Amazon sites, Barnes & Noble, Book Depository, and good old-fashioned brick and mortar bookshops.

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Sights, Sounds, and Surprises

It’s never the same there twice at the wetlands. The seasons change, the scenery changes, the birds change, and you often see something totally unexpected. These days it is full of bird song. The path I take to get to the stork nests is wooded on both sides. There are dozens of birds up in the trees, birds I can’t see, have no idea who they are, but it’s a pleasure to hear them sing.

The storks don’t sing. They tilt their head back and make a racket clattering with their beaks when one or the other returns to the nest. The sound travels and you can hear them from far off.

The only thing to spoil this chorus of bird sounds is the shouting of children large and small as they come through in school groups with adults who seem to have no idea of how to impose some discipline. The noise is unpleasant for the other visitors – at least it is for me -- and must be a bit unnerving for the birds and other wildlife.

The other day, one of those annoying school groups was being instructed by a park ranger. We were in a hide and he was explaining about the two swans that we had before us. I had never seen swans here before, but apparently they are resident. They are the most aggressive birds in the park, he said. They will chase away any other bird that comes near. I was thinking that he should explain that to the mallard that was parked a few feet away on their little island, and the coot that was feeding right in front of them. But who knows, maybe just a few inches closer and those two would become swan feed. At the moment, the swans were probably intent on trying to ignore the screaming coming from the hide.

At another hide (neither sight nor sound of children) there was another surprise. Most birds within view were far off, but I noticed a brown smudge in the grass. When it finally moved it turned out to be a deer. He was fixated on one spot that must have been especially tasty and would hardly lift his head. Then I noticed another brown smudge – this one was more lively. There were two of them, quiet as can be and just waiting for me to take their picture.

The horses were back, grazing under the stork nests. And this time there was a colt.

And then there was this. When I asked at the information center on the way out, I was told it was an invader – an American mink. That was a long swim. But no, they entered Catalonia from mink farms in France. Invaders always disturb the local natural ecosystems. Poor thing is an undesirable; he may be deported.... or worse...

Vilafreser

Returning recently from a doggy acupuncture trip to Girona, I saw a small village off to the left of the highway. Funny that I don’t remember noticing it before. Maybe it was the bright yellow fields of rapeseed that caught my eye this time. I didn’t want to stop, what with the dog in the back, so I decided I would come back another day.

It took over a week to get back there and by that time the yellow fields had been harvested. But never mind, the village was still there.

I couldn’t find a founding date for the village, but I did discover that there are documents as early as 957 that indicate that the name of the village was a composite of a Latin word and a Germanic word, put together they said Village of Peace which eventually evolved to Vilafreser.

I saw no school, no city hall (it is within the jurisdiction of the nearby village of Vilademuls -- I’ll have to visit there too, one of these days), no shop, and no bar, but it does have 99 inhabitants and a church, dedicated to Sant Sadurni, some part of which already existed in 1058.

The masia Can Divi was built in the 16^th century.

Another masia, Can Ramon, for which I have no photo, has a lintel that says 1616. I read on the city hall website that it also had another lintel, since removed, that had a Hebrew inscription, suggesting (to the city hall) that there was a Jewish colony in the area. Well, the general area had an extensive Jewish population. Castelló d’Empúries has a street named Carrer Jueu (Jewish Street); Vilajuiga means Jewish village, Besalù has the remains of the medieval mikvah. Girona, only 20 kilometers away, had a substantial and very important medieval Jewish community. Its synagogue was home to the famous rabbi Moses ben Nachman, commonly known as Nachmanides or Ramban and ancestor of Avi, a good friend of mine. He was a leading medieval Jewish scholar, Sephardic rabbi, philosopher, physician, kabbalist, and biblical commentator. But that was in the middle ages. The Jews were thrown out in 1492. 

Unless that house precedes the expulsion, how that lintel got there is anyone’s guess. It could have been salvaged. In Barcelona there are Jewish headstones taken from what was a Jewish cemetery on Montjuic (Jewish Mountain), that were reused as building stones. One is located in a wall just alongside the cathedral.

In addition to beautiful stone buildings, you can find wild asparagus growing around Vilafreser if, like this fellow, you know where to look.